Once
described as "a cunning, callous and vindictive liar, the Iago of Kings
Cross," James McCartney "Big Jim" Anderson was a
prominent figure in the Sydney underworld in the 1960s and 1970s. Some
regarded him as a 'good bloke' and he was reputed to have helped many
down-and-outs on the streets of the Cross. According to Neil Mercer, he
usually maintained a cheery disposition -- his typical farewell was:
"Remember, mate, every day's a bonus, tahdetah!" But Anderson enjoyed a
decidedly mixed reputation -- he was known for his fearsome temper and was
reviled by former associates after he turned police informer in the 1980s.

Born in Glasgow in
1930, one of four children, he was
the only son of William James Anderson, who
worked on ships and the railways. Anderson left school early and at 16 joined the Royal Marines before taking up a
variety of jobs including coach driver. He went to New Zealand, where he
became
a traffic policeman.

He came to Australia in the late 1950s as the manager of a
Maori show band called the Hi Fives, which played at Andre's nightclub in
the city before heading to the Gold Coast. It was during this time that he
met Abraham Gilbert (Abe) Saffron, a reputed
"Mr Big" of Sydney's underworld and later named in the South Australian Parliament and in various
inquiries as being involved in vice and organised crime.
According to Anderson, during the 1960s the band toured successfully through
Hong Kong, Europe and America, including Las Vegas.

Returning to Australia, he
briefly managed the Latin Quarter nightclub for
Sammy Lee. Anderson told the Herald: "And that's where I came into contact with the
likes of Lennie McPherson and
Donny 'The Glove' Smith," (a notorious Sydney
'standover' man).
"He used to wear a leather glove with lead lined all through it," Anderson
recalled.
"And when he hit you with that, you stayed hit."

One night in 1970, at the Venus Room in Kings Cross,
Smith hit Anderson, knocking him off his feet and breaking his jaw. He
apparently didn't know his opponent was armed.
Anderson recounted what happened next: "Enough's enough ... and I just went
'bang'. Shot him straight through the heart. I knew what I was aiming at ...
but then he got up again."

Anderson shot Smith three times - once in the chest, twice in the back. He
pleaded self-defence, claiming that Smith was running for a gun. He was
first charged with
murder, and was eventually committed for trial on manslaughter but remarkably the Askin
government 'no-billed' the matter and the charges were dropped. Many regard
the no-billing of the Smith case as a classic example of the influence of
organised crime over the police, the judiciary and the government during the
reign of NSW premier Robert Askin.

By the late 1960s Anderson had formed a business association with Abe Saffron and during the 1970s he
managed several of Saffron's bars, nightclubs and strip joints, including
Les Girls, the Carousel
and the Venus Room. Asked once if women renting apartments above the Venus
Room were engaged in prostitution, he famously replied: "I don't think they
were playing Scrabble."
In 1973 he suffered burns to much of his body when a petrol bomb exploded in
a nightclub. In the 1980s, he was shot at but survived. For much
of his time in the Cross he carried a .32 Browning pistol.

In 1975, when Anderson came to wide public notice, he was managing the Carousel nightclub
-- the place where
where anti-development campaigner Juanita Nielsen was last seen
before she disappeared without trace on the morning of 4 July that year. Nielsen,
through her local paper Now, had been the most visible opponent of a
multi-million dollar
high-rise project that property developer Frank Theeman wanted to build in Victoria Street, Kings
Cross, and the delays caused by local opposition to the project cost Theeman
millions.

Many, including police, believe Anderson was instrumental in Nielsen's
disappearance and presumed death. His alibi -- that he was in Surfer's Paradise at the time
she disappeared -- was never properly investigated by police. There
was much other circumstantial evidence pointing to him -- he was the manager
of the club where Juanita was last seen, he was a known associate of the
three men charged and convicted of conspiring to kidnap her, and he was a
close friend of both Frank Theeman and Theeman's "drug troubled" son Tim.
Although the links between them were also never properly investigated, there
have been persistent rumours over the years that Theeman "loaned" Anderson
hundreds of thousands of dollars and allegations that Anderson was
blackmailing Theeman over Nielsen's disappearance.

At the inquest into Nielsen's disappearance in 1983 -- and ever since --
Anderson strenuously denied any involvement. He named notoriously corrupt Sydney policeman
Det. Sgt Fred Krahe as Juanita's killer. This
claim was echoed by freelance journalists Tony Reeves and Barry Ward but no
evidence was ever offered to support it. Krahe -- reputed to have been one
of the most dangerous policemen in NSW -- had died in 1981, so it was a safe
bet for Anderson to finger him -- given Krahe's fearsome reputation
it's doubtful that even a 'hard man' like Jim Anderson would have done so if
Krahe had still been alive. Krahe had connections to the Nielsen case -- he was the alleged organiser
(on behalf of Frank Theeman) of the standover gangs who terrorised Victoria St
residents and protestors during the anti-development battle, and by the
early 80s it was also widely rumoured that Krahe had close connections to
the infamous Nugan-Hand bank and the Griffith Mafia and that it was he who had murdered
Griffith anti-drugs campaigner Donald McKay in 1977.

When reporter Neil Mercer visited Jim Anderson shortly before his
death, he still strenuously denied that he was involved in Nielsen's
disappearance:
"I don't want these lies being written about me when I'm gone. I wasn't even
in the state when she disappeared."

Anderson fell out with Saffron in the early 1980s and become an
informer for the National Crime Authority, to whom he revealed details of what
he called "the black cash/white cash" book-keeping at
Saffron's clubs -- the dual sets of
accounting books which enabled Saffron to siphon off money from his
operations without the knowledge of the Tax Office. Anderson's testimony was
instrumental in having Saffron convicted of tax offences and jailed in the late '80s.

Anderson also named a
number of police, including an assistant commissioner, who he said had been
taking bribes for years. Nothing came of it, but he got considerable
satisfaction in the mid-1990s when the Wood royal commission into the police
exposed exactly the sort of bribery he'd described more than a decade
earlier.

In 1995, he had a heart attack and moved to the Blue Mountains where he
lived quietly, travelling now and then to Las Vegas and to the Philippines.
During a visit there in 1988 he had saved six Filipino sailors during a
typhoon, and later received a bravery award from President Corazon Aquino.

Over the years, he was charged with a number of offences, including goods in
custody and counterfeiting, but never convicted. He was also close to a number of
federal police, who found him a useful source of information, "mostly when it
suited him" according to Neil Mercer.

A few weeks before his death Anderson caught avian pneumonia after feeding rosellas and was
admitted to hospital, where cancer was diagnosed. He is survived by his
former wife, Neathia, two sons and two grandchildren upon whom he doted. He
was buried at Leura on Tuesday 15 July 2003.

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